Second Star
by Emma CS Me
Summary: Perhaps only a Stark can love another Stark. Perhaps only a Targaryen can love another Targaryen. But there are no other Targaryens. (Or, in which Jon is married to Dany, but in love with Sansa, and Dany knows it.)


**Author's Notes** : So, this was initially inspired by a prompt about Dany being married to Jon, but then going to Winterfell with him and realising he's in love with Sansa, but then I lost track of that prompt which I feel like had a lot more detail in it that this doesn't really fit, so *shrug*

Also probably partially inspired by the various "maybe only an X can love another X" prompts I've seen, quoting the Borgias, hence the line in the summary.

Also, the title comes from Peter Pan.

* * *

 **moon.**

 _(right at the second star)_

It's so cold at Winterfell, Dany cannot bear to leave her rooms.

In truth she can hardly bear to leave her bed, but even a dragon must eat and drink and piss. She's wrapped up in the thick fur cloak Jon handed her, trying not to laugh as he did it, that the servants snicker at her for wearing since it was made for the long, heavy winters and not a sweet spring like this. It's too heavy and it makes her shoulders ache, but she needs it, shivering in the icy air. She remembers it was worse when they defeated the Night's King, but she assumed that was magic, such cold couldn't be _real_ , was it? But Jon told her that it wasn't that much worse than what he'd grown up with. That was terrifying.

She pours herself a glass of water – almost surprised it hasn't frozen in the jug – and peers out her window, thick glass shielding her from the weather, although even looking out there makes her feel colder. Beneath her, Lady Sansa Stark and King Jon Targaryen laugh and frolic and throw snowballs at one another like children. Dany smiles at it, although that makes her face hurt as much as her shoulders. Jon is so happy to be here. He misses Winterfell. He misses home. More than anything, he misses his family.

"Sansa!" he yelps as her missile hits the back of his neck, melting down his tunic. Dany shudders to watch it. Still, her husband looks very handsome like this, his pale skin flushed pink in the cold, those lips pouting more than ever, long dark curls plastered to his face. "Oh, I'll get you for that one!"

"What? And ruin my nice dress?" Dany likes Sansa Stark well enough, but she wouldn't say she really understands the woman. Most of the north speak of her as their lady, beautiful as porcelain and hard as steel, tempered in the vicious fires of the south. Some of them speak of her as a would-be usurper, so power-mad she married into not one but two families that tried to destroy hers, before coming home to try and steal the throne out from under her brother's nose. Of course, no-one ever dares say that anywhere near her two brothers. But neither of those aligns with the stories Jon tells her, of his sweet, naïve, ladylike sister, who dreamed of being the fair maiden to marry a handsome prince. Sansa Stark is getting old, and yet she still has not wed, although Dany knows she's of an age where no-one would care if she was unwed if she was a man. Sometimes Dany can see all these Sansas she's been told of in the girl, and sometimes she sees none of them. Dany wonders how many of them are in the woman being looked at, and how many in the woman doing the looking.

"You should have thought of that before you–" but Jon's sentence gets cut off by Sansa's yelp, as a snowball hits her square in her chest, leaving a damp patch over her breasts. Her dress is thick wool, but pure white, and her blue silk shift beneath is revealed. Sansa blushes, looking for a second exactly like the girl Jon described her as.

There's a pause between them, and Jon averts his eyes. "Sorry," he mutters, averting his eyes.

"That's alright," says Sansa, and Dany shivers beneath her heavy furs. Gently, she lays a hand over her gently curving belly, and decides to go back to bed.

* * *

In truth, they are no longer being feasted by Winterfell, merely given dinner, but the part of Dany that remembers years when a meal a day was a sign of incredible luck. So any meal so grand seems a feast to her, even if the rich hot plain dishes of the North are still a little strange to her, and she shovels down whatever she can manage. Jon seems a little bemused. She tries to take it easy with the wine however, for the Maesters and, perhaps more importantly, the King in the North, warn her it might hurt the baby. No-one wants that.

When the dancing begins, she wants to go join, but she finds she's too stuffed. Jon looks a little relieved, until Lady Stark comes over and insists he dance with her instead. "Sansa–"

"Come on, what did I bother teaching you across these steps for if you're not going to use them?"

And so Jon goes, a reluctant smile spreading across his lips as Sansa drags him to the middle of the floor, and bannermen and servants alike circle them, watching their lady and their former king. The steps they take are old-fashioned, quaint, and chaste compared to the dances they do in the capital now, influenced by Valyrian fire and Dothraki blood. But Jon and Sansa know their steps well; she's captivating to watch and he, well he keeps up.

Across the room, Dany eyes the King in the North – a courtesy title, really, he's no more powerful than his father ever was – watching his siblings with a smile. She thinks he'd quite like to go dance, but of course he cannot. By his side is his wife, the Crannog woman, looking restless – like most Crannogmen, she is small, but fierce. They have no child yet. She knows the northern lords worry, that some say of course the cripple cannot, like he cannot go join in the dancing, although the Dany thinks the maesters would have said something if that was the case. Others claim it's the woman's fault, of course, that she's too old and Bran should put her aside. But he'd never do that, and of course, no Northern man is going to move against Ned Stark's last living son. But Dany knows how many of them regret they had to replace the bastard son – who was not their liege's at all – with the trueborn.

That's part of why there's such a fuss Sansa remains unwed. She is, by default, the heir.

Jon pulls Sansa into his chest as the dance ends, and she giggles against the plain of his chest. Dany watches him fold one of his rough hands over her soft ones, the one with the burn scar. Around them, the northerners applaud and cheer, and Jon looks a little embarrassed as he pulls away.

Dany reaches for her wine again, but then stops. No. She ought to be careful, for the sake of the baby.

* * *

Marriage proposals, official and unofficial, are simply a fact of life for Sansa Stark. Perhaps men think that if they bombard her with enough of them, she will eventually give in to one out of sheer frustration. Dany can't help but sympathise with her. This time it is the young heir of House Glover, who is in fact _very_ young, much younger than Sansa, and a little younger than Bran. Dany thinks they might be doing that on purpose. Everyone knows Sansa Stark's terrible history of marriages, and they think giving her a husband who's little more than a boy, too young to ever really try and control her, a boy she will raise as much as she beds, is more likely to win them her hand than a man she would be afraid of.

This proposal is very much unofficial, and Dany doesn't think they would discuss it with the King and Queen here, except Sansa still turns to her big brother when she needs advice.

Dany doesn't mean to eavesdrop. But she does. "I don't know why I'm so reluctant," says Sansa. "I've met the boy, and he's – he's sweet. Barely old enough to know what goes where, but still, not that much of a risk. At least, I don't think so." She pauses and sighs. "He's about the same age Joffrey was."

She thinks of Hizdahr zo Loraq, who she had never loved, had never liked, had never even treated with respect – but who had never had been cruel to her, and who for all her distrust, had proven loyal, at least, loyal enough for the Harpy to cut his guts out. She didn't even know he was dead until she returned to Mereen from Vaes Dothrak. She did not cry for him. Once he was gone, she barely remembered she'd been married to him at all.

Jon speaks with a stern frown in his voice. "You know you don't have to. I'd never force you. And neither would Bran."

"I know that," says Sansa, and a pang of envy strikes Dany's heart. _I'd let his whole tribe fuck you, all forty thousand men and their horses too, if that's what it took._ "But still. I'll have to choose someone, someday. If I'm the heir–

"You don't know that. Bran and Meera still might–"

"They might. But they haven't yet." She pauses again. "You know, sometimes I wish we–"

Sansa cuts herself off before she finishes that sentence. Jon says nothing. And Dany, Dany bites her lip and walks away, trying to temper that Targaryen fire in her heart. This is private. She shouldn't be listening.

* * *

She finds herself outside, soaking her boots in the grey snow, and immediately regrets it. She pulls her furs around her tighter, but it does little to help, she should just turn and go back inside but she's so cold she can barely _move_ , she gasps for breath and watches it flow from her mouth like smoke, and this can't be good for the baby–

"Careful, Your Grace."

A second fur is fastened around her shoulders, and she thinks that, for a man who cannot walk, Bran Stark has a remarkable capacity for sneaking up on people.

A little warmer, she turns and sees him perched on a stone windowsill behind her, and she doesn't know how he got up there but she supposes it doesn't matter. Everyone knows that the King in the North is capable of impossible things. "Thank you, Your Grace," she says, and in truth they should probably find some other term of address for him, to cut down on the confusion, but then again she does not know how his bannermen would take that. Many of them still believe in the cause of true Northern freedom, and still resent how the king they'd chosen's dragon blood make them kneel once more, only for him to leave them to become her king instead.

She knows many of them believe Bran is a poor exchange for his brother; not only Jon, but the other one, the first King in the North – by which she means not the first King in the North by any means, but the first one who was _their_ king. Jon has never told her about his brother Robb, that wound still seems too great, but throughout the Seven Kingdoms they tell stories. He could turn into a wolf at night. He let his men feast upon the flesh of their enemies. He never lost a battle, but he lost the war in a bedroom. He was a strong, noble, righteous man, like his father before him, unjustly betrayed. He was a stupid boy who led his kingdom to ruin because he couldn't keep his cock in his pants.

From the stories she hears, he reminds her a little of her brother Rhaegar, although she's never made the comparison aloud. She doesn't know how Jon would take that. Besides, she never met Rhaegar – so how would she know if they really were alike at all?

"Thank you," she smiles, and he smiles back.

"What are you doing out here?"

She hesitates. He is probably the last person she wants to explain this to. "I needed some fresh air," she lies, and of course he's not going to believe her, he always knows everything.

Bran nods and looks back over his shoulder briefly. He sighs.

"You know, you don't have to worry," he says. "They're not doing anything. Believe me, if they were, I would know."

"But would you tell me?" she asks, and a grim look settles over his face. For all his power – as a king (who is not a king) and the power that few kings could ever have – he's still very young in many ways, and he hadn't considered that. Everyone knows what her temper is like, the men she's had burned alive for defying her. Westeros already endured one civil war because its ruler took a consort who strayed, and even if Jon and Sansa weren't his brother and sister, she doubts he would take the risk of plunging the kingdom back into that.

Still, she knows he is telling her the truth. Nothing is happening. Neither Jon nor Sansa would ever.

It doesn't make her feel any better.

Bran doesn't answer her question, but gently, he lays a hand on her shoulder. "Your Grace – Daenerys – are you alright?"

Daenerys. There are some who still call her Dany, but none who call her by her birth name unless reciting a list.

"Of course I'm alright," she smiles her most diplomatic smile, from one ruler to another, and he does not believe a word of it. "But I ought to return to my rooms. It's quite cold out here, and I think the baby wants me to get my rest."

He nods and lets her go, and she knows no matter how much he pities her, he would do anything to protect his family from her wrath. Like his father did to protect Jon from Robert Baratheon's wrath. _Perhaps only a Stark can love another Stark,_ she thinks, drowning in her furs. _Perhaps only a Targaryen can love another Targaryen._ But there are no other Targaryens.

* * *

 **sun.**

 _(and straight on 'til morning)_

Dany's relieved when they return to King's Landing. She's glad when she can shed the mountains of fabric she needs to defend her from the Northern weather, and walk normally again, although she still does not dress as loosely as she did back in Essos. The blue and white gowns she wore as Queen of Mereen still hang in the back of her closets, growing tattered and moth-worn, but she cannot bring herself to throw them out. She's happy to be reunited with her dragons, although Jon only bids them the customary welcome, which seems as much as they want. They have grown to accept him, but not to truly love him like they do her, and she supposes that is common for children whose mother has taken a new husband. Sometimes she worries what the dragons will do when the baby is born, if they will be jealous. It would be funny if the Dance of the Dragons happened again, but with an actual dragon.

It's a beautiful night, more summer than spring, and Dany sips a glass of wine – one can hardly hurt – as she watches the stars, her long silk robe blowing in the breeze. The Arbor Gold she drinks isn't really to her tastes, a little too tart and too plain, for she is used to Essosi wines full of spice and sweetness, but the treasury hardly has the coin to import such things when they have plenty of good Westerosi wines, made by grapegrowers who much more need the money.

"Your Grace?" She turns and sees Jon in the doorway, his shirt half-open, revealing his tight muscle and the scars still littered all over it. If he was anyone else, she'd think he'd dressed specially to seduce her, but she knows he's always a little too revealed. He hates it, but King's Landing is too hot for him. He was made for the chill of Winterfell, and the ice of the Wall. She's not sure he'll ever adjust. "Are you coming to bed?"

"In a moment," she says, and he nods, giving that serious look he gets when he contemplates his duty.

"Should I wait for you in your chambers?"

Ah. There is no need of it now she is with child, but he still seems to view it as his responsibility to pleasure her. "No, that won't be necessary," she says, and he nods. She knows she is a beautiful woman, and he doesn't seem to despise fucking her – he's never struggled to get it up – but she doesn't think he's ever done it because he wants to more than because he has to. Perhaps it's because he knows they share blood. That seemed to disgust him at first, and maybe it still does, and some part of her wants to scream and rage at him for being such a hypocrite, since they share no more blood than Ned Stark's parents did, not to mention how he feels about the woman raised as his sister, but perhaps to the Starks the dishonour does not come with the desire, only with the acting upon it.

She was born of a true brother and sister though, who were born to a brother and sister themselves. Perhaps _she_ disgusts him.

It's a shame, since he fulfills that duty with the same vigour as any other, so he was good at it, very good – better than Daario, certainly better than Hizdahr, even better than Drogo. He remembers the first time he'd used his mouth on her, made her scream and tear strands of his hair out as she begged and pleaded for more. After, as she'd tried desperately to catch her breath, she'd asked _where did you learn how to do that?_ mostly because she just needed something to say.

But then a horribly sad look crossed his face, and he'd told her the story of his first love, a wild woman beyond the wall, who he'd spied upon and who had died in his arms. Dany hadn't known what to say, but she'd held him close and stroked his cheek as he explained. _What did she look like?_ she must have asked at some point, although she doesn't know why.

 _She had red hair,_ Jon smiled as his dark curls and her white locks tangled in the sheets. _Kissed by fire._

Dany doesn't know if Ygritte was a replacement for Sansa or Sansa is a replacement for Ygritte. She doesn't know which would make her feel worse. Still, there's a good chance it's neither; she doesn't know if the women had anything in common beyond the hair.

"Dany?" Jon seems to realise how far she's drifted off. "Are you alright?"

"Of course," she says, but she realises she is not facing him; she is looking at the stars again. He sighs and she hears him come up behind her, and then, lost for something to to do, he starts idly braiding her hair. Sansa taught him to do that too, she remembers. She used to play with Drogo's hair like that when she was bored.

If he simply asked her permission to take Sansa as his paramour, she would allow it. He is not only her husband, he is her blood, and she has no wish for him to be unhappy. But he never would. He'd be insulted if she ever brought it up, he'd shout _she is my sister!_ in a rage. She might wake the dragon.

His burnt hand grazes against her neck. _Fire cannot kill a dragon._ Jon could not dishonour Sansa like that, he could not dishonour _her_ like that, for he is too much his father's son – his true father, not simply the man whose seed he happened to spring from, but the man who loved him and raised him and risked everything to protect him. Jon is a Stark, he will always be a Stark, and neither Rhaegar's blood nor her cunt will ever make him anything else. She's no more made a Targaryen out of him than Tyrion made a Lannister out of Sansa.

He finishes the braid, sighs, and pulls it out again. "Jon," she says, "do you love me?"

She knows the answer to that, of course. What she means is: _could you ever love me?_

He hesitates, but she knows he is not going to lie to her. "I am... fond of you."

Fond. That's what Ser Barristan said Rhaegar was of Elia Martell. And Jon himself is living proof of how little that meant.

"Good," she says, and smiles a little. "I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me. I've been in a strange mood lately. I'd say it's my moon blood, but..."

Jon laughs at that. Everyone had been so relieved when it was announced the Queen was pregnant, when they learned that she could become so. She'd looked up at the stars that night too, as if maybe, just maybe, if she could carry a child again that meant... but of course it didn't. She doesn't know what she would have done if it did.

"I'll see you in the morning," says Jon, and he kisses the top of her head gently before he walks off, back to his own chambers – not the King's, which are hers, nor the Queen's, but what once were the Hand of the King's, which Tyrion was quite put out about until he realised that Jon was simply looking for anything familiar in this strange city, anything that was once his father's. Viserys used to kiss her hair like that sometimes before tucking her into bed, when they had a bed he could tuck her into, when she was very young and he wasn't so – so...

He had loved her once. He must have loved her once; he could have left her on the side of any road in any city in Essos to starve, but he never did, so he _must_ have loved her. _I'd let his whole tribe fuck you, all forty thousand men and their horses too._ It had rotted his heart, what happened to their family, until selling her for an army seemed a fine thing to do. She thought of Hizdahr again, and his father, who she'd nailed to a cross and left to die of thirst and heat. On their wedding night, she thought he might take a knife to her throat in revenge. She wasn't sure she could blame him.

She didn't cry when Drogo killed Viserys. How could she, after all he had done to her? But after, once Drogo was gone, she'd started to miss him – not him as he had been for years, the man who terrorised her because he had nothing else left that was his to control, but the boy who had raised her, who had loved her, who was the only family she'd ever known.

Dany learned to love the man her brother sold her to. That first night, she'd allowed him to use what he'd bought – but after, he seemed to think that meant she was his, to be used as he saw fit. But still, she'd learned to like it. She'd learned to make him let her set the pace, take control, as if there was anything she could do to him if he refused. She'd loved him so much she'd killed their child because she could not let him die.

She still wonders if loving him was the right thing to do. They said Sansa Stark fed one of the men she'd been sold to to his own dogs, and perhaps, if Dany had born her dragons earlier, she would have wanted to do something similar. But at the time, falling in love with her husband had seemed the right choice. The smart choice. And she had done it, by the gods, and ruined her heart in the process.

Jon will never love her. She is too strange to him, too foreign, too Essosi. Perhaps when he was younger, Ned Stark's bastard son dreaming of being something better than what he'd been born to, her strangeness would have excited him. But now he is older, dreaming only of long gone days in the North with a family who loved him, and she is a tether keeping him from ever truly being part of that family again. She should be grateful he doesn't hate her.

The breeze blows through her silk and she shivers. She is still too cold; she is always too cold. She doesn't belong in this city any more than Jon does – she knows it's too hot for him, but it's nothing like the red, parching heat of the Dothraki sea.

Westeros loves its queen. The smallfolk write songs of the beautiful woman whose dragons could burn you to a crisp, who saved them from wicked Queen Cersei and the White Walkers, who restored her family to its rightful place, that family full of madmen and monsters. The love is always laced with fear. She cannot say they have nothing to be afraid of.

But does anyone still love her even if she couldn't do anything to them if they didn't?

She does not return to her chambers that night. Shivering, she falls asleep beneath the starry sky, where her first love told her all things that mattered to men should be done.


End file.
